Circular Logic
by Thessaly
Summary: [Coda] She’s a little over a year old, said Candle dryly.  She ought to have a name.  Liir watches clouds and indulges in longish drabble.


**(A/N)**_ I feel as though this is missing some essential component of metaphor or philosophy, but I can't for the life of me figure out what, and it wants posting, so I yield to my flighty muse and put it out for your perusal. Criticism very much appreciated! Characters and situation are not mine; they're Maguire's, and the extent of Liir's cooking was very wisely pointed out to me by Tom O'Bedlam. _

The cloister of St. Glinda was a place of peace and frozen time, full of light and shadow; old memories and experiences, lost or forgotten or waiting to be claimed. In one of the small rooms, Head Maunt Candle sorted herbs, listening in a rather detached way to the news from the young man on the other side of the table.

"And I'm thinking of repairing the presses," Liir finished. He glanced over at Candle who, with her head bent over her basket, might have been frozen herself.

"How nice," she said vaguely. Then she looked up properly. "What did you name her, Liir?"

"What, the presses?" said Liir.

"No, the baby," answered Candle, tying a bunch of spring-green mint.

"I – Oh," said Liir. "I didn't. She's just the Baby. Her. The girl."

"She's a little over a year old," said Candle dryly. "She ought to have a name."

Liir sighed. "Well, what should I name her?"

"Naming for a family member or a saint is traditional," she pointed out.

"This coming from someone named Candle?" said Liir.

Candle shrugged. "It's my maunt name," she said. "But it's right all the same. Names are important, Liir child of nobody."

"Oh." Liir looked at the herbs laid out in tidy lines. He should have realized that. "Why don't you name her?" Candle looked genuinely confused and didn't answer, only cut another length of twine. So he stood up and said, "Thank you. I'll think of something."

She nodded, then held out a few bunches of herbs. "Here, take some along. You can make stew."

"Eggs," Liir corrected. "I can't cook. Only eggs and cocoa."

Candle almost smiled. "Eggs, then."

Liir walked back to the farm through the long grass and sunshine. His feet got wet. He groaned; a visit to Kiamo Ko to claim Fiyero's boots was becoming more and more likely out of sheer necessity though not, he was sure, desire. He paused on the hillside. Over the top would be Apple-Press Farm. He wondered if it had been entirely safe to leave the girl alone with the Goose. Probably not; he didn't think children of eighteen months were supposed to be left by themselves. But he'd had to go out for supplies, and he wasn't taking her to the mauntuary.

He sat down, then stood up again and fished a crushed mint spring from his pocket. It was a fresh green, cheerful and pungent. Liir sighed and lay back, twirling the mint between his fingers. What to name a child? It was hard enough when she came into the world to be welcomed by two loving parents. Hard enough giving an arbitrary definition to a living, thinking being. Oh dear…Liir had no idea even where his name had come from; how was he qualified to dispense names to others? Why had the maunts named him Liir anyway? _Had_ the maunts named him? Or had them held him out to a comatose Elphaba and named him for some gibberish she had inadvertently let fall? His name was odd enough; to hear it was a pun that wanted explaining, and visually it was unfinished, confused, with two awkward vowels next to each other. It certainly _sounded_ like a mistake; it would be appropriate if it were. He wasn't precisely jealous of the fact that his parents (well, the ones he claimed for himself, anyway) had had no time or interest for their accidental child, but some days he was a bit…irritated.

Sun and shadow flickered across the back of his eyelids, shapes chasing themselves around and around in a generational circle that never quite ended. Liir opened his eyes and looked at the fleecy white clouds. One directly above him looked like a bit of spilled milk…without being precisely aware of what he was doing, Liir floated backwards into someone else's memory: an image of flour spilled on a scarred table. He was looking over the shoulder of a man in a white shirt who put out a dark hand and wrote _Fae + Yero_ in the flour. Another hand – long and green – shoved his white shoulder in an uncharacteristic, playful gesture that made Liir's heart twist curiously, and dropped a lettuce leaf over the writing. Fiyero scooped a handful of flour out of the jar and threw it. Somewhere, someone laughed.

Liir found himself staring at the clouds and sighed again. Then he stood up and walked over the hill to his own home, where no one waited but a very small child and an arrogant Goose. Where no one would throw flour or laugh with him. The girl, playing in a ray of sunlight on the floor, looked up at him and gurgled when he came in. Liir smiled in spite of himself. "Hello," he said.

"Feh," she said, and squeaked.

For the second time that day, the obvious gibbered and did a mad dance in front of Liir. "No, Fae," corrected Liir, sitting down beside her. "Would you like to be named Fae?"

"Feeeeeh," she announced. Then she looked up at him and said, "Ler?"

Liir laughed. It felt creaky. "That's right, Fae and Liir."

"Ler," she said cheerfully. "Ler, Ler, Ler, Ler."

He smiled. "It is a nonsense word, isn't it? Well, why don't we name you Fae. Give you a real name instead of fuctionals and mistakes." He picked her up – he had some idea that babies should be held – and she squirmed a little, then leaned back against his chest. "If we're going to operate in circles, why don't we do it in grand style?"

He didn't get an answer, but then, he never expected one.


End file.
